Five-year-old in critical condition after sexual assault

Karachi A five-year-old girl has been admitted to a hospital in critical condition after she was raped in Orangi Town’s Sector L on Tuesday.

A case (34/376) has been registered at the Iqbal Market police station by the girl’s father, Yousuf.

Sexual offence was confirmed by a medico-legal officer at the Civil Hospital Karachi, Samia Saeed, in her medical examination of the young girl.

According to Iqbal Market SHO, Yousuf came to the police station and told the officials that his five-year-old daughter was found lying unconscious near his house in Orangi Town. He said the girl had been standing outside her house on Monday evening when a couple of unidentified men came riding on a motorcycle and picked her up. The girl was found lying near her house after about six hours after which Yousuf took her to the Civil Hospital Karachi and registered a case.

Rape and sexual assaults remain a widespread problem in Pakistan, as apathetic or incompetent officials have made it a norm for investigations into incidents of gender-based violence to be mired in controversy.

This year, there have been multiple rape cases in the city including that of a minor girl at a wedding hall in Orangi and the gang-rape of a 12-year-old in the Ghaggar Phatak area. Investigations in all cases, including the two cited above, have not led to any concrete progress with the former pending in court and the latter seeing the victim hold a conference at the Karachi Press Club on March 23 to appeal for justice.

At the presser, she had identified that one of the rapists, Imran Kalmati, was arrested by police, while two others were still at large. The girl’s uncle, Altaf Hussain, said the family was being pressured by Kalmati’s relatives to drop the case. He added that the girl’s father, Munawar Hussain, a drug addict, had been offered a large sum of money and was forcing Kiran and her mother to withdraw the case.

With almost all of this year’s gender-based violence cases of Karachi in limbo, it is unfortunately quite plausible that, instead of stern action against the perpetrators, we would continue to witness more such appeals from courageous, yet powerless, survivors.